Wednesday, May 14, 2014

I love Spider-man... well except The Amazing Spider-man movies. As a huge fan of Spider-man, those movies are boring and the suck so much! I love the comics that are being butchered by Sony recently and big things happened in the comics... Peter Parker is back in his body and he's got a lot of catching up to do. I'm going to talk about the comics first, then the movie. There are going to be a few spoilers in this so [Spoiler Warning]!

A while back... Peter Parker died in The Amazing Spider-man #700 and this was HUGE! Admittedly Marvel did kill Peter Parker in the Ultimate Spider-man comics, but his death there was a true and proper death... but his death in issue #700 was comic book weird. In issue #700 Doc Ock after swapping his mind with Peter Parker watched him die in his dying body and feels guilt for killing him. Ock then becomes the Superior Spider-man and tries to make Parker's life his own and improve it as well as Spider-man in his own way.

During the 33(31 normal and 2 annual) issue run of Superior Spider-man, Ock turned New York into an always monitored city with his Spiderbot. Also with the whole Big Brother thing, Ock also upgraded the Spider-man costume and gave it claws... weird... and he also threw in the robot arms thing, because Doc Ock. Being upset Peter Parker never got his Doctorate, he went back to college to earn the degree Parker never finished and met his new love interest Anna-Maria Marconi and his teacher of all things was a former class mate of his named Dr. Don Lamaze. Doc Ock as Spider-man... just goes overboard... seriously, he builds an army and even kills a villain! During the early part of the story a sliver of Peter Parker's consciousness tries to find a way back, but Doc Ock deletes that with what he calls a "Parker-ectamy" and deletes almost all of Peter Parker's memories except what he deemed necessary. Doc Ock eventually gets his Doctorate and with some financial aid of Aunt May and John Jonah Jameson Sr to start up a company named "Parker Industries" which is all about scientific advancements.

During the Superior Spider-man, the main plot that comes to pass in the Goblin Nation arc is that all this time, The Green Goblin has been planing a HUGE scale attack on New York and the Superior Spider-man had no clue of it! Green Goblin hacked the Spiderbot system to hide anyone who looks like a goblin, built an army and waged war on the city and to top that... he turns Parker's ex girlfriend Carlie Cooper into a goblin and knows that Doc Ock is Spider-man. The events lead to Doc Ock not being able to handle Green Goblin and Anna-Maria being kidnapped by him. This in turn results in Doc Ock having to finally accept that Peter Parker is the true superior Spider-man and revives Parker's consciousness and deletes himself, a sacrifice to save the woman he loves. Parker obviously saves the day and we come to Amazing Spider-man Volume 3 #1. If you want a more in depth summary of Superior Spider-man, the Wikipedia page does a fantastic job of it to the point that you don't really need to read the comics... although I recommend you do if you want the full events.

Amazing Spider-man Vol. 3 #1 is essentially a set up for the future events. Peter has to deal with a new company he owns, friends angry at him and a relationship with a woman he knows almost nothing about. Personally I loved this issue because it ended on Anna-Maria Marconi finding out Peter is Spider-man and finding an engagement ring... and Peter finds out that she actually lives with him. Pretty much, the first arc of Amazing Spider-man Volume 3 is Parker adjusting to Doc Ock's life as Peter. I can't wait for the next issue!

Now on to the the Amazing Spider-man movies... ugh! Sony was scared of losing the Spider-man movie rights and threw together a movie a couple years ago to save it's claim to the Spider-man movie license. The first movie was a piece of crap that looked terrible, had a terrible story, they weren't true to the comics depiction of Peter Parker and the costume was horrible! I could spend hours bitching about it, but MovieBob's review(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/5995-The-Amazing-Spider-Man) covers it well.

Amazing Spider-man 2 pretty much fails in a lot of the same ways as the first film did. It's biggest problem? It's a 2 and a half hour trailer for Amazing Spider-man 3(probably subtitled The Sinister Six)! The story once again is boring and they kill Gwen Stacy like in the comics... ok at least they used something from the comics... barely! The main problems with the story is that the star villain Electro is both uninteresting and doesn't reflect his comic counterpart in any way, Peter Parker's parents storyline rubbish comes back into the story of this movie and destroys the flow of the movie, Harry Osborn's appearance is one movie too late and him being the Green Goblin due to his illness is really stupid. Again, MovieBob's review(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/9126-The-Amazing-Spider-Man-2-The-Movie-That-Broke-MovieBob) does a great job going over what's wrong with this movie and better then I could ever do... I mean come on, he's a professional movie critic and I'm just a nerd with a blog almost no one reads!

Amazing Spider-man 2 is just a soulless movie that's designed to keep the franchise in Sony's hands. All the fans that want to see Spider-man in the Avengers films or even back to competent film makers are going to be disappointed for years to come. I suppose there is hope in the fact Amazing Spider-man 4 will have a different director... but you can't salvage what's already happened in the Amazing Spider-man movies. Also I hate the fact that since Sony owns the movie license for Spider-man, I'll never see a Marvel Studios Spider-man movie with the Ultimate universe's Spider-man Miles Morales since anyone paying attention to the movies should have realised by now that the movieverse is based on the Ultimate universe of comics for the most part.

So there you go, Peter Parker is back in the comics with more strange adventures ahead and the Amazing Spider-man movies will suck like the Australian 2014 Budget. I'm sure people probably like the movies... but if you are a comic book fan who likes the Amazing Spider-man movies, you need help. Well at least the Sam Raimi movies are still great Spider-man movies.

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About Me

I'm a video game player and independant game reviewer who likes anime, manga, building Gunpla, heavy metal and comic books. All games I review are my own I've owned for years or are purchased by me on eBay or at various electronics stores in New South Wales, Australia or online.